This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art, which may be related to the present embodiments that are described below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present disclosure. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light.
Individual in-room receivers (e.g., televisions, dedicated receivers, and so forth) cannot generate a guide. A headend device can receive program guide information from content or service providers and/or generate a guide and send the guide out over the distribution network.
Headends exist that output a program guide implemented as a scrolling non-interactive display, broadcast over a single quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) channel. Thus, the user at the receiver end cannot interact with the guide.
Moreover, in the aforementioned prior art headends, no backchannel exists to facilitate communication from the in-room receiver to the distribution headend. Rather, only front-channel communication from the headend to the receiver exists.
LodgeNet™, a media provider specifically directed to hospitality and healthcare businesses, provides an interactive guide. However, the guide is dependent on a backchannel line of communication from the receivers to the headend.
Similar problems may exist in a home media distribution system. The ability to provide a backchannel line of communication from the various receivers distributed in the home to a home gateway device acting as a headend may be limited by the distribution system.
However, the user experience for television media content viewing is enhanced through the use of a program guide that is interactive in response to a user input. Therefore, there is a need for a program guide delivery mechanism over a local network that improves the user experience by providing a level of interactivity in response to user inputs.